jeremyb

I'm not sure why I read this 2nd book in the series, after the terrible first one. Probably because the main character has some powerful magical abilities, and a few people said this book was better than the first.

It was better...a little bit.

The main problem is a ton of unrealistic actions (even for a fantasy book). Just about every single guard the characters meet ends up fighting them, and then dying because of the party's awesome skills. Has the author never heard of lazy guards that don't really pay too much attention, or that are not able to identify some criminal they have never seen? I'm sure they existed (and still do).

Plus, the "Empire" dedicated thousands of soldiers to finding these few people wandering around inside their borders. I wouldn't think a nation at war could spare all these troops to search for a couple slightly annoying characters. I mean, at one point, just two of the travelers were surrounded by separate empirical armies on 3 sides (yes, the author misspelled "imperial" as "empirical" a few times in the book).

And lastly, the magic - ugh. There seem to be many obvious applications of magic that James does not think of, and ends up choosing the most inefficient method available to him. And sometimes a little magic makes him about ready to pass out, and sometimes a lot of magic just makes him a little dizzy.

Oh. And I won't talk about how James resists the idea of killing someone who wants to harm him, but ends up killing hundreds of slaves without much thought.

Hopefully the series will get better, since I may continue reading just because I can't find enough books about mages...